THE BRITISH THREAD II

Do you mean you think you might know better than that wizard team Mac? All the way from your sofa.

That young son in his hard hat of the first guy up I will remember all my days.

And the wife of the sole Bolivian was a picture to conjure with.

What a day it has been. Let's hope and pray that it is all done soon. Those guys who went down though. What can anybody say?

So you have got a heart after all, despite well-founded fears to the contrary. That's nice. I share your satisfaction in a job well done. So many things could have gone wrong.



WTF, I hear you cry.
Well, this is a sculpture (in coal, I believe) of "Die Heilige Barbara", Blessed Barbara or St Barbara, who looks after miners, in a coal mine in Germany.
She's been busy this week.

You will learn more on a day like today Mac, from TV, than you will learn from the whole pile of celebs and wankers in a thousand years. It was one of those days when actors and greasers were placed where they belong. On the back burner.

If I may be permitted to interfere with Laurence Sterne's fabulous prose for a moment I would say that there is a soft area in every gentle mortal's life where such an image as that young lad made, unbeknownst to him of course, affords more pabulum to the brain than all the scientists, historians and philosophers could ever cook up whilstsoever they are permitted to have a hole in their pelvic fundament.

And that Tiwanaku wench, who is the Bolivian's wife, was a vision of Dylan's "I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea". Or his stunning line in Black Diamond Bay--" Her passport shows a face from another time and place".

A truly great day. It had **** all in it for Darwinians.

In fact they did just that. All you observed (I watched it too, and very carefully because I had similar concerns) was the mechanics & engineers remove each wheel assembly; check it for foreign objects & condition; verify the spring integrity & freedom of motion; and reinstall the assembly with a little swipe of grease applied at the axle - a standard practice. I didn't observe any repairs at all.

This was a prudent verification, after six or seven round trips, that the assembly was working as designed. Again, the consequences of a jammed rock in the wheel assembly would have been very large compared to the effort required to inspect the wheels.

This is standard stuff in operating even simple mechanical components in cases where there is lots of possible (even if unlikely) variability in their operation and the consequences of failure are particularly high.

On aircraft carriers the design of the arresting gear cable (the cross deck wire that catches the tailhook on landing aircraft) was similarly rugged, relaible and designed with a large safety margin. Still we replaced the cable after every 100 engagements and visually inspected it after every 10th engagement. The operating principle was the same.

In a nut shell, Georgeob 1 "the survival of the fittest."

George doesn't do nutshells.



No more does Spendy.

Looks like we'll have to send the St Bernard out for Smorgs.

She's gone and got her fragrant self waylaid.

Or no way.

That's true,

I understood about every third word in places.

Yeah, it's a little thick in places. I hope you got the joke though.
My kid had the same complaint...

It's English, Jim, but not as we know it.

The callcentre guy sounded a bit foreign, and the caller was Welsh.

You could see him from where you were ??

He mentioned the place where he was. Merthyr. Wales.

It doesn't prove he was, but it's a clue. He had a Welsh accent too.

Another day dawns, and as another working week (for some) commences, what do we know?

Wayne Rooney and Sralex have fallen out.
Threats to national security are being highlighted. Are we being manipulated?
Kate Moss got married.
We're looking at a double-dip recession. Alex Salmond blames both Labour and the Tories.
City, lucky to win at Blackpool, are second top.
Smorgs is missing. National alert.

Did anyone notice the Australian medal tally at the Commonwealth Games ?

No, I didn't notice.

Mornin' all - not missing, just have connection problems, I have declared war on BT.

x

Hi everyone!
Sorry to always go missing for ages and then come back in with something unrelated, I don't check this often enough.
I saw McT wanted to know my first impressions, well:
I like it a lot, I was initially slightly wary that the city would be slightly prosaic, but after seeing Kowloon yesterday and discovering some of the more 'authentic' Chinese places, I've decided I really like it. Teaching is fine too, my kids are mainly 5 year olds, it just means I spend all day playing.

How is england and all your tax cuts?

I went to see my kinswoman there, and as she was working during the day, I had to fend for myself. I amused myself going into a restaurant where there was no English written or spoken, and got by just pointing to things I thought I mght like. It worked out well, on the whole.

The Chinese don't seem to go in for pleasantries, they cut right to the chase, and can seem abrupt to us mealy-mouthed westerners.

If you want to go for a sail on the tourist junk (the Duk Ling) book well in advance. I couldn't get on. Bloody tourists.

But maybe you don't.

Freshly opened horsechestnuts, don't they look splendid? Glistening with a muted sheen, and figured like the finest mahogany. Year by year, delight in them is undiminished.